DURING THE EARLY months of 2021, Moscow's residents were treated to a brief democratic contest: a chance to cast an online ballot for one of two candidates. The winner—a statue—would grace the infamous Lubyanka Square, the headquarters of the Soviet Union's KGB and its successor, the Federal Security Service (FSB). Prior to the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, the square featured a statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky (1877–1926), a Bolshevik revolutionary and the founding father of the state security apparatus. Nicknamed the “Iron Felix,” Dzerzhinsky was behind the wave of political repression that followed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. He remained the symbol of unwavering commitment to state violence, embodied in the institution he founded. Unsurprisingly, the removal of this statue in 1991 was one of the first public acts that marked the beginning of post-Soviet Russia.

Thirty years after the protests toppled Dzerzhinsky's statue, another public campaign began to demand its return. These voices are emblematic of Russia's deepening authoritarianism and its reliance on ever-expanding security forces. Perhaps because Dzerzhinsky's reappearance on Lubyanka was too symbolic, a new, rival candidate emerged. Unlike the “Iron Felix,” his rival hailed from a deeper past: a medieval prince of Novgorod, a saint, and more-or-less a household name in Russia, Alexander Nevsky (1221–1263). Viewed as a more moderate and less odious figure, Nevsky—though, notably, a patron saint of the FSB—seemed like a compromise and was rumoured to have the Kremlin's support. Ultimately, Moscow's mayor called off the contest and left the Lubyanka Square as it was. But the question that arises from all this remains: why is a medieval prince associated with state security?

Increasingly commemorated by the state, the ROC, and various military-patriotic non-governmental organizations, Alexander Nevsky is at the heart of Russia's political medievalism. Since his death in 1263 and the composition of his saint's life some years later, the prince has become a site of memory routinely interacted with by Russia's ruling and church elites as a form of commemoration from above. As a military and political leader praised for his victories against Swedish and German invaders, Nevsky is invoked primarily as a bulwark figure, a symbol of national defence and resurgence, and a powerful symbol of Russian conservatism.

Two separate accounts have been transcribed and translated here. Both are preserved in The National Archives at Kew and come from the records of the Exchequer. Both date from the reign of Edward III and relate to the affairs of Thomas de Snetesham who was Clerk of the King's Ships in the early years of this office. He was first appointed in 1336 but at times shared the title and the duties of the office with William de Clewere and Matthew de Torksey whose accounts at times cover periods overlapping with those of Snetesham. Similarly towards the end of the reign of Edward III the office seems to have been shared to some extent between Robert Crull and John de Haytfield.

The duties of the office seem not to have been clearly defined until the end of the century with each clerk having a slightly different set of responsibilities. Generally, the duties of the Clerk of the King's Ships extended to the repair of royal ships, sometimes to the building of a new one, the provision of supplies like cordage and caulking materials and occasionally victuals, and the organisation of ship keepers to care for the vessels when they were in harbour or laid up in an anchorage. The Clerks were not concerned with operational matters although some mention is often made of the voyages for which a vessel was being prepared. A particular value of these accounts is to allow some conclusions to be drawn about the ships themselves, their design and their equipment. They also allow us to understand how a medieval monarchy approached the expensive and onerous task of keeping a royal fleet in a seaworthy condition and the way in which this had become of much greater concern than previously in the reign of Edward III.

The first account edited comes from the Accounts Various class of the Exchequer (TNA E101) and consists of the particulars of account kept by Snetesham for the year 18 Edward III, that is 25 January 1344–25 January 1345. He is described as Clerk of the ship George, not as Clerk of the King's Ships in this particular instance. From the account it is not clear whether this refers to the ship called George , formerly in French ownership, which was captured at the battle of Sluys by the English and which sank in Winchelsea harbour in 1346.

From the fifteenth century, when the verb “digest” first entered the English language, the act could refer both to the scholarly work of mulling over food for thought and the bodily one of breaking down organic matter in the stomach. One could hope to digest both “hye witt” and “baskettes of breedes.” I say hope because, of course, digestion sometimes fails. While there is a longstanding understanding of reading as a kind of consuming, there is an equally long tradition of readers who fail to take in their reading matter or who only absorb it incompletely. In more ways than one, then, reading was a matter of taste. As the opening to the Old English poem now known as Solomon and Saturn I hints, however, when we read something carefully, we do not merely taste it; we digest, even as some texts prove frustratingly inedible.

Many early medieval English riddles center on precisely that range of readerly (in)digestibility. While all riddles are designed to provide food for thought and consequently invite close and careful reading, some resist any easy digestion. Several even foreground this kind of unproductive reading directly by presenting tantalizing scenes of empty consumption, from Aldhelm's Enigma 89, in which a bookchest is “stuffed with divine words” (“divinis complentur … verbis”) but fails to profit from the books that fill it, to Exeter Book Riddle 45, whose moth similarly “was not a whit the wiser” (“ne wæs / wihte þy gleawra”) although he “ate words” (“word fræt”). Centering on these two figures, this essay explores the motif of reading as failed digestion, in contrast to the ruminative reading practice advocated by thinkers like Bede. Together, these acts of consumption invite us to reconsider two of the most puzzling digestive remnants in early medieval literature: the Donestre's victims, whose heads they weep over after consuming the rest of their bodies, and the beheaded figure of Æschere, the king's counselor in Beowulf.

This essay expands James Simpson's observation that William Langland's Piers Plowman develops its meanings out of the dynamics of different institutional discourses. By examining petitions recorded in the fourteenth-century English Parliament Rolls and William of Pagula's De Speculo Regis Edwardi III (Mirror of King Edward III, written in the 1330s), in tandem with Peace's bill in Piers Plowman, this essay argues that the emergence and development of political theory in the poem observe a particular kind of rhetorical logic with a distinctive dynamic. Langland's allegorical personification adds sophistication and sensitivity to the poem's political analysis and qualifies institutional discourses to comment on the “secular.”

For many critics, the two-way traffic between the secular and the spiritual constitutes the heart of Langland's allegory. However, in my reading of allegorical personification in the first vision of Piers Plowman, the secular Peace, deprived of the mutual containment and interpenetration of the secular and the spiritual, cannot sustain its own congruity. The suspension of mercy and grace makes justice and peace impossible.

In the first vision, the dreamer-narrator Will witnesses the King's justice in the court. One focus of the first vision in all versions of the poem is the marriage of Lady Mede, whose name has the double meaning of profit and bribery on the one hand, and gift, including the spiritual gift of God, on the other. Mede is to be wedded to the knight Conscience, whose name seems to suggest he is merely an ethical and mental abstraction but who proves to be an emphatically public figure, a diplomat, knight, and lawyer. Conscience rejects Mede and initiates a heated debate with her in the royal court, prompting the King to summon Reason.

A second, equally important focus is Peace's petition in court against the bully Wrong. Mede bribes Peace in order to appease the petitioner and acquit the abuser. Although Peace then agrees to withdraw the petition, Conscience and Reason persuade the King to execute the law strictly and punish both Mede and Wrong. In the C-text, the King then appoints Reason as Chancellor and Conscience as Chief Justice.

[52] Friday 10 February 1559

Acta convocationis sive sacri concilii provincialis praelatorum et cleri civitatis dioecesis et provinciae Eboracensis, decimo die mensis Februarii anno Domini millesimo quingentesimo quinquagesimo octavo, et regni dominae nostrae Elizabethae, Dei gratia Angliae, Franciae et Hiberniae reginae, fidei defensoris etc., anno primo, et auctoritate eiusdem congregatae, habitae et gestae in domo capitulari ecclesiae cathedralis et metropoliticae Eboracensis inter horas nonam et duodecimam ante meridiem eiusdem diei, inchoatae coram venerabili viro Magistro Iohanne Rokeby legum doctore, reverendissimi in Christo patris et domini Domini Nicholai, permissione divina Eboracensis archiepiscopi, Angliae primatis et apostolicae sedis legati vicario in spiritualibus generali, et inpraesentiamei Thomae Clark notarii publici, eiusdem reverendissimi patris registrarii.

Quibus die, horis et loco, comparuit personaliter Magister Gulielmus Rokeby in legibus baccalaureus et praesentavit et exhibuit commissionem praefati reverendissimi patris praefato Magistri Iohanni Rokeby ac Magistro Georgio Palmes legum doctoribus coniunctim et divisim. Facto quo per me praefatum Thomam Clark notarium publicum registrarium antedictum de monito dicti Iohannis Rokeby publice perlecto, idem Magister Iohannes Rokeby ob honorem dicti reverendissimi patris committentis onus executionis dictae commissionis in se assumpsit, ac pro iurisdictione sua in hac parte ac ulterius procedendum fore in hac sacra convocatione iuxta tenorem et effectum eiusdem commissionis decrevit, et tune lecto breve dominae nostrae reginae eidem reverendissimo patri propter convocationem in hac parte habendam directo, ac facta praeconizatione pro omnibus et singulis in hac sacra convocatione sive synodo generali provinciae Eboracensis interesse debentibus comparuerunt prout in schedula annotantur. Et tune pronuntiavit omnes et singulas personas ecclesiasticas in hac sacra convocatione interesse debentes contumaces et in poenam contumaciarum suarum huiusmodi decrevit ulterius procedendum fore in eadem convocatione [53] eorum contumaciis sive absentiis [non] obstantibus, et reservavit poenas contumaciarum suarum huiusmodi imponendas usque ad et in decimum sextum mensis Martii proxime futuri continuavit et prorogavit huiusmodi convocationem in eundem diem inter horas nonam et undecimam ante meridiem eiusdem [diei] hoc loco. Et monuit omnes [et] singulos iam praesentes ad tune intefressendum] ad ulterius faciendum et recipiendum [quod] negotia et natura dictae conv[ocationis] suadebunt in hac parte prout plenius patet in schedula per eum lecta.

This Appendix also serves Elizabethan Naval Administration (ENA), and so includes many ships not featured in this volume

The list is restricted to royal ships, including prizes which were not formally absorbed into the fleet, but excluding most hired merchantmen. The names of all these vessels have been standardised in the text; the MS variants are set out in the index. The details derive principally from the sources listed below, which are more briefly cited than in the main annotation; the full titles are given in the complete list of abbreviations on pp. xv–xxiv. Anderson's reference is given first in the end-notes because, though his details have often been corrected, his remains the most comprehensive list in which each ship has an identifying number. Glasgow's list, which gives a separately numbered sequence for each reign (but concluding at 1588), is cited next. Other sources are in order of publication. Oppenheim has annotated tables for the ships of Henry VIII and Elizabeth, but not for additions under Edward VI and Mary. Rodger's list includes only ships of 100 tuns or above. Colledge, covering the entire history of the Royal Navy, frequently features many ships of the same name on the same page, making citation less precise. The comment ‘Not in other lists’ refers only to these works. No comprehensive check has been attempted on the sources from which they were compiled; only Oppenheim gives references, and these are not always reliable. This new version will inevitably transmit errors and widen specifications which had been correctly narrowed in the preceding works. Only the most significant variant details among these are noted.

Builders

If known, the names of the boilders or builders are given in brackets after the date and place of building. Likewise, in two cases, the individuals in charge of destruction. Only occasionally before the 1580s can a ship be confidently assigned to a particular builder. It has been argued that all the new shipbuilding of the 1570s was at Deptford, and that the newly appointed master shipwright Matthew Baker was chiefly responsible rather than his senior colleague Peter Pett. This interpretation calls into question the previous assumption that the new work was shared ship by ship between Pett and Baker.

Tonnage

This should be understood as burthen (bn) unless ton and tonnage (tt) is indicated. Both measurements derive from commercial practice.

The first time I met James Simpson – tireless scholar, bold critic and shifter of paradigms, generous collaborator and friend – we had a wonderfully exciting conversation about Piers Plowman. I hope that this essay will speak to his transforming work on that allegorical poem, but also to his interest in allegorical hermeneutics and his suspicion of its Reformation opponents.

In the essay I will be taking a hard look at what we mean by medieval “allegorical narrative.” This phrase usefully foregrounds the elements of imaginative figuration and narrative diegesis to be found in these texts. However, many readers have used the term “allegory” synonymously with it, and in long-standing literary-critical practice the two usages seem to be substantially interchangeable. As we will further see, the word “allegory” is also locked into the history of the theorization of the mode. For these reasons, I will keep the two terms in play.

I will be asking three questions. First, why is allegorical narrative/allegory still so often associated with a negatively-loaded notion of obscurity? This obscurity is usually assumed to be a form of purposive esotericism, intended to keep certain kinds of reader out. Of course it is true that there are some medieval texts and commentators that subscribe to a hermetic or “gatekeeping” view of allegorical composition and hermeneutics; but should we read all medieval narrative allegory in light of it? I will suggest not. This first question is almost certainly linked to a second one: is it helpful to describe narrative allegory as structured around a binary polarity that opposes, on the one hand, the languages of diegesis, figuration, indirection or obscurity, and, on the other hand, the languages of elucidation and explication? It is true that a polarity of this sort, along with a recognition of the pervasive presence of glossatory practices in medieval culture more generally, has in recent decades proved a productive hermeneutic in discussions of these texts. Nevertheless, it may be that the critical emphases encouraged by this polarity have had the effect of distorting our sense of the texts they have been used to analyze; in this essay I will be putting this polarized view of narrative allegory under the spotlight.

The Garlande or Chapelet of Laurell of John Skelton ends on a note of poetic self-congratulation rarely sounded in fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century English poetry. Having appeared in a dream before the Quene of Fame in order to justify his place at her court, Skelton's poet-narrator reports the recital by Occupacyon of the list of his works recorded in her ‘boke of remembrauns’ (line 1149). Finally, after more than three hundred lines, and as many as fifty-one known, lost, and some possibly spurious works, Occupacyon makes mention of the present poem:

There is much that is novel in Skelton's dream of fame, much else that is consciously antique. Skelton's textual double, Skelton Poeta, is honoured in a Roman-style triumph and welcomed into the company of the great poets of the past. His Garlande constitutes the capstone of a monumental poetic achievement which not even the capricious Fame can deny. In this, Skelton makes a marked departure from his foremost source: Geoffrey Chaucer's House of Fame. Line 1507 of the Garlande reimagines the description of Chaucer's Whirling Wicker, out of which:

Where in Fame, the noise emitting from the Whirling Wicker is a cacophony of rumour, in the Garlande, the alarum of the assembled poets communicates a single affirmative message: the triumph of Skelton Poeta. Where Fame's ‘newe tydynges’ (line 1886), having passed into the world, are propagated or dismissed according to the erratic judgement of Fame, in the Garlande, Skelton's poem has the immediate status of an auctorite (cf. Latin auctoritas), inscribed as it is in Occupacyon's ‘boke of remembrauns’. Skelton rejects Chaucer's contention that poetic fame is arbitrary and impermanent.

Introduction

Agatha Christie's work has traditionally been regarded as emblematic of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, which covers the twenty or so years between the two world wars. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920, and her most famous works—The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), Murder on the Orient Express (1934), Death on the Nile (1937)—are products of this period as well. This timeframe is aptly referred to as the Golden Age because the most widely read and influential novels of Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, John Dickson Carr, S. S. Van Dine, and Marjorie Allingham were written at the time as well. Yet to limit Christie's achievement to the years between the two world wars is a failure to acknowledge the fact that Christie, as well as several other Golden Age authors, continued to produce major work after 1940. In Christie's case, she continued to write until the mid-1970s, and the later books comment on the changing mores and values of the times, most interestingly those associated with the young generation of the mid and late nineteen sixties. As a result, analyzing these late novels demonstrates that the label “Golden Age” and the years 1920–1940 as its time period are both “uncertain spaces” that need to be qualified by attention to the entire span of Christie's career.

What I will discuss here primarily are some of the novels she published between 1965 and 1970, books in which she depicted the youth culture of those turbulent years: the rebelliousness, the rejection of authority, the widespread bohemianism that involved drugs and the relaxation of sexual standards. This is a world far removed from the country estates or middle-class tourist life she commonly treated in the past, and her vision of the world is darker, with the books taking on their own noirish sensibility. Five books from this period—At Bertram's Hotel (1965), Third Girl (1966), Endless Night (1967), Hallowe’en Party (1969), and Passenger to Frankfurt (1970)—include references to the new youth culture that was exploding in the Western world.

Before departing to commence his new-found vocation as a hermit, the fourteenth-century mystic Richard Rolle dressed in his sister's clothes. Procuring two tunics from his generous sibling, Rolle ripped and tore them, refashioning her garments so that ‘he might present a certain likeness to a hermit’. Recorded in the office of lessons and antiphons drawn up in 1380 in preparation for Rolle's canonisation, this is a remarkable scene. Escaping from his Oxford education, from the centre of patriarchal written and scriptural authority, Rolle chose an alternate religiosity: a choice marked by cloth, as he tailored and designed a new spiritual identity and experience. McNamer astutely writes of Rolle's ‘willingness to engage in feminine self-fashioning’, connecting the hermit's ‘gender performance’ to the use of the feminine as a locus of the affective compassion which is so central to his writing. Indeed, it is no coincidence that women's garb forms the basis of Rolle's makeshift ‘habit’ in this scene at the very beginnings of his eremitical vocation. Rolle not only dresses in his sister's garments, but participates in the very process of fabricating devotion and selfhood which we have seen so persistently coded as a female practice throughout the Middle Ages. Moreover, his actions position such feminine devotion as preferable to, spiritually richer than, institutional (patriarchal) Christianity.

Rolle's sartorial self-fashioning underscores the spiritual independence and satisfaction which could be located in and expressed through cloth in medieval England. Ameliorating women as sensory beings, highlighting even the exegetical capacities of Eve, the quintessential model of female transgression, textiles offered a particularly potent and powerful motif in devotional literature. Under the guise of socially coded feminine conventionality, cloth and clothwork repeatedly reified a form of exegetical interpretation and practice which brought women closer to Christ. Quite literally fabricating Christ's body, the Virgin Mary assumed a central role in both promulgating and interpreting the divine Word, a prerogative entirely maintained as that of the masculine priesthood in ecclesiastical culture. St Veronica turned to cloth in her desire to physically experience Christ, centring her own prayers around a textile object, and offering another example of the female fabrication of Christ.

Medieval Icelanders drew richly on their own storytelling tradition when translating stories from the Old Testament, and this was facilitated by the significant overlap between biblical stories and sagas. The translator of Stjórn III might even be thought of as a saga author in his own right, recreating the world of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in the style of an Icelandic saga. But what can be said about the opposite scenario: it is possible that any of the Icelandic sagas were influenced by the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament? Although the translations into Old Norse-Icelandic are relatively late, stories from the Old Testament must have circulated early in order for some of the allusive references in the Old Icelandic Homily Book to make sense. Most monastery and cathedral libraries would have had copies of the Pentateuch with Joshua and Judges and the Libri regnum, so those well versed in Latin could have read the historical books of the Old Testament, especially in Augustinian monasteries that followed the educational programme recommended by Hugh of St Victor. Any Icelanders who studied abroad after 1215 would also know Comestor’s Historia scholastica, since this was prescribed reading for the first year of university study.

Although there is no overview of material in the sagas borrowed from the Bible, a number of individual studies have found possible loans in Sverris saga, Oddr’s Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, Hrafnkels saga, Egils saga Skalla- Grímssonar, Eyrbyggja saga, Laxdoela saga, Njáls saga, Flóamanna saga, Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss and Yngvars saga viðfqrla. Some of these are New Testament loans: the nativity and the transfiguration in Oddr’s Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar or the temptation of Christ in Flóamanna saga. These are easily visible, and there can be little doubt that they are borrowed, since they stand out in the saga world. The same cannot be said for borrowings from the Old Testament. While Sverris saga and Oddr’s Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, both written at the Benedictine monastery of Þingeyrar, make direct references to biblical characters or verses, this is not the case in the sagas of Icelanders and most of the possible loans could be disputed. Many would question Torfi Tulinius’s typological interpretation of Egils saga – ingenious and insightful though it is – and Hermann Pálsson’s moralised reading of Hrafnkels saga. Others are cautious about claiming direct influence.

On 5 December 1934 Italian and Ethiopian forces clashed at the desert town of WalWal. The location was so obscure that there was doubt as to whether it was located in Ethiopia or Italian Somaliland. The Italian government demanded both an apology and reparations and initially refused an Ethiopian proposal to refer the dispute to arbitration. Ethiopia was, however, a member of the League of Nations and requested an investigation of the responsibility. A long series of complicated diplomatic machinations began and by the winter of 1935 it was apparent the Italians were building up their military strength in East Africa. In May 1935 the Council of the League of Nations established an arbitration commission to examine the question, but in the face of Italian opposition there was no agreement on procedure. The League then called in an additional arbitrator in July with the more restricted charge of establishing responsibility for the clash, but not the ownership of the disputed territory. Italian military preparations continued and from the bellicose statements of the Italian leader Benito Mussolini there was little doubt the Italians were bent on war. A three-power conference in Paris between France, Great Britain and Italy on 16 August submitted compromise proposals, subject to Ethiopian approval, that were scornfully rejected by Mussolini on the 18th. The Commission of Inquiry into the WalWal incident delivered an anodyne verdict on 3 September. Neither side was to blame for the clash since both the Italians and Ethiopians considered WalWal to be in their own territory. The Italian preparations for war continued. Hostilities could therefore lead to a situation where other members of the League might be called upon to enforce sanctions against Italy in fulfilment of their obligations under Article XVI of the Covenant of the League. On 11 September the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, delivered a strong statement at the League that Britain would honour her obligations under the Covenant, this despite the claim made by the French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval that the day before, in a private meeting, Hoare had ruled out military sanctions, a naval blockade, closure of the Suez Canal or anything likely to lead to war. In practice, a major role would be played by the two leading Mediterranean Powers, Great Britain and France.